A long-time self-described pro-abort (and I’ve read this guy’s stuff before, he certainly has been) is starting to have second thoughts over the Planned Barrenhood expose videos done by the Center for Medical Progress. There is also an interesting admission regarding what it means to be a man, and how this man, as so many others, have failed horribly in that duty:

The only thing I hate more than talking about abortion is writing about it. It’s no accident that, in 2,000 columns over a quarter-century, I have never—ever—written about abortion. I’ve avoided the topic like a root canal.

But that is getting harder to do with the release of what are now five gruesome,albeit edited, undercover videos by The Center for Medical Progress depicting doctors and other top officials of Planned Parenthood discussing, and even laughing about, the harvesting of baby organs, as casually as some folks talk about the weather.

It’s jarring to see doctors acting as negotiators as they dicker over the price of a fetal liver, heart, or brain, and then talk about how they meticulously go to the trouble of not crushing the most valuable body parts……..

……As I’ve only realized lately, to be a man, and to declare yourself pro-choice, is to proclaim your neutrality. [BS. It’s to proclaim your cowardice, quite possibly for the prurient reason of pleasing some wacked out feminist] And, as I’ve only recently been willing to admit, even to myself, that’s another name for “wimping out.”

At least that’s how my wife sees it. She’s pro-life, and so she’s been tearing into me every time a new video is released. She’s not buying my argument that, as a man, I have to defer to women and trust them to make their own choices about what to do with their bodies. To her, that’s ridiculous—and cowardly. [Alright, so maybe his doubt is more about his wife. Good for her! Since he’s Hispanic, maybe she’s converting him]

[WARNING: One bad word in following paragraph. Such is our discourse today….]“You can’t stand on the sidelines, especially now that you’ve seen these videos,” she told me recently. “That’s bullshit! These are babies that are being killed. Millions of them. And you need to use your voice to protect them. That’s what a man does. He protects children—his own children, and other children. That’s what it means to be a man.” [How sad that it takes a woman to tell a man what it is to be a man. And there are very few women around who would know what makes a man. I’m not sure there are many more men who do, either. That’s just one effect of divorce+feminism, and male abdication of duty: very few men have even a remote conception of manliness]

I didn’t like the scolding, but I needed to hear it. For those of us who are pro-choice, the Planned Parenthood videos are a game changer. As to whether that means I’ll change my view, I’m not sure. [And he STILL reverts back to cowardice. How are they a “game changer,” if you’re still on the bubble? The hamster wheel is spinning at warp speed trying to come up with new rationalizations?] I’m on the bubble. Ask me in a few weeks, after the release of more videos.

This guy has been a pretty far out pro-abort, though, so if he’s wavering, maybe finally some of this revelation of the reality of abortion is starting to sink in with some people. Prayer is most certainly advised to help this softening of hearts continue.

On another somewhat positive note, a county clerk, claiming that to do otherwise would endanger her immortal soul (so the odds of her being Catholic are about 1:1000), has determined to cease issuing all marriage licenses in her county rather than be compelled to issue any pseudo-same-sex marriage licenses. Note that CNN trotted out the mythical “long-term stable couple” to embarrass and try to discredit this judge, but their very longevity makes it virtually certain they do not reserve their perverse faculties for each other:

A federal court judge has ordered her to start issuing marriage licenses, but she has refused. God bless her. I’m not totally on board with her response – the ultimate response would have been to continue issuing marriage licenses but to refuse to issue them to sodomites – but it’s probably necessary at this stage, legally. We are seeing the first martyrs of the ascendance of the sodomites, and their efforts to drive believing Christians completely from the public square. To my knowledge, none of them are Catholic, because, of course not, for 50 years Catholics – or katholycs – have been taught that the greatest virtue is to go along to get along, never make waves, and be as in-tight with the culture as possible. Our good (ahem) bishops don’t need another headache with some scrupulous Bible-thumping integrist souls making waves against this diabolical culture! Pay and obey, that’s what they want (having long ceased to give a @$%! about prayer).

You will be made to care. You will not be permitted to be quiet or on the sidelines, you will either support this demonic perversion or you will be harassed and persecuted until you do.

So has Bishop John Stowe of Lexington spoken in defense of this woman (once again, it takes a woman to do a man’s job in this country, it seems), or has he meekly suggested that we must “obey the laws of this nation,” no matter how unjust or perverse? After all, the USCCB is into the federal government for billions of dollars every year! Don’t want to upset that gravy train.

Note that one of the men at the center of this imbroglio is no longer looking quite so clean cut as he did a month ago when they first deliberately initiated this controversy:

Pink hair, pierced nose, etc will be right around the corner?

The denizens of Sodom and Gomorrah thought so, right until the moment that they didn’t, to their complete and abject horror.

The article below via Eponymous Flower is a bit hard to make out, but it appears that there have been more revelations of strange behavior among the leadership of the Franciscans of the Immaculate in recent months, including the re-instating of a priest who had been removed from the order by founder Fr. Stefano Manelli, and some threats of lawsuits associated with the revelation of that reinstatement. Also interesting in the below is the claim that Fr. Angelo Bruno, one of the prime instigators of the “coup,” if you will, against the order’s founder and former leadership, how has sole authority over the order aside from the Apostolic Commissioner. This is different from the previous leadership of the order, which consisted of a number of individuals, if what I can tell from the article is correct (and it seems to correspond with what I already knew).

I try to clean up some of the language below, and add comments where necessary:

Since last June, the Order of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate have been assigned the Salesian priest Sabino Ardito, a canon lawyer, as the new Apostolic Commissioner. [Since the death of former Commissioner Fr. Fidenzio Volpi] Yet there is still a demon in the Order, says Messa in Latino. Father Alfonso Bruno was responsible and the ultimate beneficiary of the palace coup against Founder Manelli. [Messa in Latino is an Italian blog of traditional bent]

Alfonso Bruno, the father with a penchant for self-expression, [not sure what that was supposed to mean……that he has a large and loud presence?] already belonged to the old leadership the order, where he was responsible for its media presence. At that time he was only one among several. Then came the dismissal of Minister General Father Stefano Maria Manelli and the whole Order leadership by the Vatican. Alfonso Bruno was the one who made the news public through his media contacts and thus – at least initially – of the urgency of a radical intervention.

Apostolic Commissioner Father Fidenzio Volpi was then appointed, who was ran like a bulldozer over the Order. [An apt description, according to the FIs I have spoken with] The first official act of the Commissioner was the appointment of Father Alfonso Bruno as Secretary General of the Order and thus his right hand. Excepting the Commissioner, who belongs to the Capuchin Order, Father Alfonso Bruno has since been at the top of the Order of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, and completely alone. [Implying a difference from the previous leadership, which consisted of a number of men. Instead, Bruno is described as having sole power apart from the Commissioner]

The decisions by which the clear-cutting was done were signed by Commissioner Volpi. Partially also by the Secretary General, in part he remained in the background, as he had done well in advance of the palace coup against the Founder, who embodied the Order’s charism and the Old Rite. But his handwriting appears on the endless flood of corrections, warnings, notifications, which were all issued since the coup in July 2013, against those who expressed criticism of the actions of the Holy See and the Commissioner. [And there has been a great deal of criticism, and many have left. Vocations have all but ceased. And yes I have understood that Fr. Bruno, along with an accomplice or two, have been responsible for attempts to re-make the order to their liking.]

So here the coverage gets a bit muddy. The gist is this: a certain Fr. Scozzaro was dismissed with cause from the Order in 2007. He appealed his dismissal to the Congregation for Religious in 2008 but the dismissal was confirmed. However, he was reinstated by Fr. Volpi and Fr. Bruno earlier this year. This is surprising since the Congregation of Religious had confirmed the dismissal. There is evidence that Scozzaro was dismissed for stridently opposing the more traditional direction the order was taking, and did so publicly. He may have even been an early leader of the disaffected faction. After an Italian Catholic site reported this reinstatement, they received a cease and desist notice from an Italian lawyer retained by Scozzaro. The lawyer claimed the website had libeled Scozzaro but since they were only reporting public facts it seems the main intent of the threat of legal action was to intimidate the website into pulling down an embarrassing revelation.

All in all, the turmoil seems to continue within the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate. Interestingly, I haven’t seen much on what is happening with the Franciscan Sisters (FSI). Certainly, whatever is occurring hasn’t received anything like the publicity surrounding the bulldozering of the Friars. Perhaps no news is good news? I know the FSI’s retained good canon lawyers and seemed to be more ready for the intervention based on the sad experience of their brethren. Anyone know any more?

Regarding Fr. Bruno, there is a fairly obvious implication from the original article – could it be that this whole sad saga had its origin in the desire of a handful of disaffected men in the order for personal aggrandizement and the desire for “power?” It seems surprising, but men have certainly made others suffer for much less in the tragic history of the human race. Struggles for authority over religious orders have many times in the past descended into the worst vice, vindictiveness, and general ugliness. Yes there are obvious theological/ecclesiastical implications in the seeming destruction of this formerly blossoming order (thou shalt not raise critical questions of Vatican II), but sometimes those are just the cover for something uglier and baser.

Will probably make a really good book at some point, but I don’t the full story ever gets told.

My fervent apologies again, dear readers, I just found that Akismet has been blocking about half of all comments made and marking them as spam. Almost every reader affected has already been added to safe lists and has commented many times – for both reasons they should never get flagged as spam. I am sick of this problem and said so to WordPress. No response, yet.

I found about 35 valid comments just from this week that had been blocked. That is unacceptably bad performance, since actual spam over that period only amounted to 5-6 attempted comments.

Something is going to happen to rectify this problem. If WordPress can’t prevent so many valid comments from being blocked, then I’ll have recourse to some other response.

On another note, if you have chickens as we do, I thought you might enjoy this:

Highly interesting post from Rorate containing a never-before published memo from the late traditional Catholic publisher Neil McCaffrey on the phenomenon of “neo-Catholic” papal cheerleaders in the post-conciliar period. The memo identifies a number of weaknesses in the hyper-montanist viewpoint, which frequently seems to ascribe to the reigning Pontiff not just a narrow infallibility in faith and morals taught Ex Cathedra to the entire Church, but a form of impeccability, an idea that the Pope can do no wrong even in the smallest of prudential matters – or at the very least, can never be criticized for even the most questionable prudential judgments.

What is conveyed below is not the idea that Catholics should engage in willy-nilly opposition to the Pope on any matter that crosses their mind, but with several decades now of far less than stellar Popes, and where the good of souls is in question, it can be seen that refusal to countenance any criticism of the Holy Father is a major factor in the ongoing crisis in the Church, as born out by reams upon reams of real-world data on the status of the Church.

I actually think the memo below misses several key points, which may not have been as visible when written in 1976 as they are now, but it’s an interesting analysis, nonetheless. I pick out some highlights, go to Rorate Caeli to read the rest (my emphasis and comments):

1. Scripture makes no bones about the weaknesses of the Apostles and especially of Peter; which in any case were well known to the early Christians, whose faith survived the knowledge. Catholic history, from the age of the Fathers on down, provides us with the model. It was only in the 19th century that some Catholics found it necessary to refine the policies of the Holy Spirit. [Sort of a jab at Vatican I? There were very good reasons for defining papal infallibility at Vatican I, since the Doctrine of the Faith was so under attack throughout Europe at the time. And, it made sense in another way, that the Church had been blessed with an unusually strong group of Popes from Pius VI on through St. Pius X. This probably helped build confidence in the idea that a Pope would never do anything nutty, since no one had a memory of a Pope doing so. But what it did, perhaps inadvertently, overlook, was a future time when the Church might be afflicted with a bad Pope, or a whole string of them. Such had certainly occurred in the past. But the Dogma of infallibility has had the effect of many Catholics putting the Pope on such a pedestal that he is above criticism, and perhaps rightfully so to some degree, but as the Church, through her leadership, has veered severely off course in the past several decades, the limitations of this idolization have become increasingly apparent]

2. The papacy is given primacy from the earliest years, yet there is little evidence of papolatry until we get to the last century. The papolaters of our day would have been regarded with astonishment by the Fathers, by Dante, by St. Catherine, by Bellarmine, by Suarez, by just about anyone you can name.[I’m not expert, but my limited reading would tend to confirm this supposition]

3. We can see papolatry in perspective when we put it beside its kin; and we can do that with a flying visit to Moscow or Peking. There too we are allowed to criticize underlings. Pravda does it every day. But the Leader, never. [Good point. Is it possible to view papolatry as an ecclesiastical mirror of the (particularly) 20th century tendency towards the deified, strong man, infallible Supreme Leader of disordered nationalism? That is, people formed by nations to worship the national leader transferred the same kind of obeisance to the spiritual leader? Just a wild thought]

4. Those orthodox Catholics who feel most comfortable with the spirit of Vatican II are least comfortable with its encouragement of free speech. John [XXIII] and Paul [VI] told us to relax and speak our minds. Perhaps they meant us to make an exception about speaking of themselves, but in fact they didn’t say so. So their admirers hasten to protect the Popes from themselves. (It seems, then, that popes can make mistakes; but only a privileged few are allowed to notice them.) [There’s been a great deal of this mentality from some quarters lately. Privately, they might hold opinions of Pope Francis that would surprise, even shock, many souls, but publicly they will admit of no criticism, because they hold only a very narrow cohort, including themselves, naturally, faithful enough to hold such thoughts]

5…… I have never heard a good argument for the new liturgy or for the new laxity in discipline. [But, buh…….the opening of Scripture! Language of the people! LOL]Even the papal cheerleaders can’t muster an argument, for the excellent reason that there is no argument that would commend itself to the orthodox. All the arguments, such as they are, come from the infidels. The papal cheerleaders can only repeat their incantation: obedience, obedience, obedience.[That was the mantra by which faithful reaction to the revolution in its early days was effectively beat down?]By which, ironically, they don’t really mean obedience. They mean something else. They mean: shut up.[Exactly. Nah nah I can’t hear you! Don’t tell me inconvenient truths!] Is it necessary, in this circle, to spell out the distinction between obedience and calling black white? (By way of underscoring the bankruptcy of papal policy, have you remarked that nobody ever talks these days about devotion to the Mass? There are no more courses on the Mass, no more books, no more private studies so that we might assist more knowledgeably and devoutly.[Well, there are today, but most are either re-prints of pre-conciliar sources or firmly traditional in character] In fact, if you so much as call it the Mass, you are a reactionary. There is a message here for the apologists of the new liturgy. But they don’t want to hear it. That would be “disloyal”. As long as we polish up the reputation of the present Pope, it would seem, we can forget about what happens to the Mass.)……..

7. We heard a lot of talk Sunday about the importance of faith when authority misbehaves, all of it sound. I think faith involves a corresponding devotion to truth, even unpalatable truth. What does a Catholic have to fear from truth? Shrinking from the truth is an indecent posture for a Catholic. Granted, tender souls need not concern themselves with high policy, and with the blunders of those in authority. That does not exonerate the mature Catholic. Moreover, if nobody concerns himself with these blunders, nobody will criticize them; and evil will flourish, unopposed. [Exactly. And it is not for me to decide who is mature, and who is not. It is up to the soul themselves to determine what ideas their faith can countenance, and if they screw up, my “culpability” is minor, at worst, because I wasn’t writing for them, anyway. I have heard far too much talk of “oh, don’t criticize the Pope, you’ll scandalize someone and they’ll lose faith!” Well, if a stupid blog post is going to cause someone to fall away from the Faith, they must have been within a hair’s breadth of doing so, anyway. I’d say a far more substantial moral “threat,” is to think what we write or present on the internet is so all-powerful and so garsh-darned important that scads of souls hang on our every word and will fall away in their thousands if we make the slightest slip. Ego much?]

Not only that, but the papal cheerleaders are naive if they suppose they can silence criticism. All they succeed in doing is suppressing it among the orthodox.[Ding ding ding!] So the only criticism the Pope hears….is from the enemies of the papacy. When we reflect that this Pope is obsessed with public opinion (‘‘human respect,” the spiritual writers used to call it), it becomes double folly to choke off constructive criticism from the loyal orthodox.

————–End Quote————–

OK, I’ve certainly got a point of view. And I worry about that point of view from time to time. I have some concern that I might hold some latent protestantism that causes me to not have sufficient respect or deference towards authority. But then I read things like the above and see that my beliefs line up with some very reputable and devout souls. I tend to think they are right, and that maybe coming from the outside into the Church as an adult provides a greater perspective.

I have long believed that “papolatry” or “hyper-montanism” is one of the key factors that has allowed the revolution in the Church to occur. The fact that the revolution, or major portions of it, seem to have had the support of the recent pontiffs, to varying degrees, has chilled the Catholic response for exactly the reasons highlighted above. And I have great sympathy for those who cannot bring themselves to criticize the Pope. I think they are wrong, but I understand their motivations.

But after some possibly illusive, hopeful years under Benedict, we see that the revolution is not done. In fact, it is never done, until it has either totally destroyed whatever it afflicts, or is definitively opposed and broken. And since the papacy has either allowed or encouraged so much of the revolution to occur, it seems that restoration can not occur by just castigating bishops and priests. The Faith will never be restored until we have pious Popes who restore the Faith.

Pointing out problems with the past and current popes is one way to help make that restoration occur, and I’d argue, an indispensable one.